Cybersquatting and individuals

[Timothe Litt]

The challenge with new TLDs isn't just the acquisition fee; it is
infrastructure.  People, world-wide network connections, redundancy,
disaster tolerance, physical security, anycast addressing, legal, etc.  I
suppose it could be a volunteer/non-profit activity - but doubt that's
practical.  I don't think I'd want to take it on in my basement.  In fact,
to meet minimum standards, several of us would need to contribute basement
space...

Existing registrars/registries have all this.  I don't mind paying them the
same fees as we pay today for .com/.net/.us, etc for taking care of all
that.  I just want the operational rules to reflect this class of
non-commercial users; and that means the registry agreement between ICANN
and whoever operates it.  That then ripples down-hill to end-user agreements
that define what rights do (and don't) exist.

But this is putting the cart before the horse.

It seems to me that the trick is to demonstrate demand, get the requirements
sorted out with buy-in from ICANN, and then get one of the existing
registries + a registrar to agree to operate one.  That gets it going at the
marginal cost (close to $0), rather than trying to reinvent an industry.

Part of the challenge is educating consumers that this/these TLD(s) are
better for them.  I know of people who have had their domain names
confiscated under tradmark theories.  But this is hardly widely understood
by the public at large.

Maybe we could persuade ICANN that since this is rectifying a major failure
of it's duty to individuals, the first TLD application should be free.
After all, .COM was free (to NSI/Verisign...)

If it takes off, the other registrars would sign up, and the next TLD could
pay for itself.

Of course, all this only addresses the new TLD approach - it still leaves no
rights for individuals in domain names under current TLDs.

On another note, registering redcross.ncu would be perfectly OK as I see it
(say, the red cross quilting club, or my cousin Red Cross.); having a
website on that domain with the red cross's trademarked logo (especially
that collected money) would be fraud under any legal theory.  E.g. while
having a domain name that could be confused with a trademark seems OK,
providing content using that domain that interferes with the trademark
owner's business/reputation is not.  This would be different from
redcross.org, where no matter what the content, there's a reasonable
expectation that you get the NGO.

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-----Original Message-----
From: NCSG-NCUC [mailto:NCSG-NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of
Nicolas Adam
Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2011 15:20
To: NCSG-NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: Cybersquatting and individuals

I guess from an (individual) non-profit perspective it is indeed totally
unreasonable. I kind of assumed that all TLD-launching operations would be
for-profit. Should we strive for a price distinction between for-profit and
not-for-profit endeavors (keeping in mind that all new TLDs would likely
still need be approved)?

Nicolas

On 07/04/2011 3:01 PM, Timothe Litt wrote:
> As an individual, coming up with several US$100K to make this happen
> isn't reasonable.